


When It Was Time

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-16
Updated: 2010-03-16
Packaged: 2018-04-16 14:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4628988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Jane and the Doctor have just been reunited on Gallifrey during The Five Doctors. But it’s the wrong Doctor, the wrong time, and the wrong situation. A series of three stories about the aftermath of The Five Doctors, told through three different points of view, the Third Doctor, the Fifth Doctor, and Sarah Jane. (Each chapter is complete in itself.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Roadsters and Jelly Babies

**Author's Note:**

> I am of the opinion that the Doctor does not have intimate relations with many of his companions. He’s a fairly staid and celibate man, and I suspect most Time Lords are the same. However, based on his behavior toward a few of them you do get the feeling that something is happening off screen. One of these is Sarah Jane Smith, based off the reactions of the third Doctor in Planet of the Spiders, the fourth through most of his series, and particularly the terror and the awkwardness between her and the fifth in the Five Doctors. (And the tenth, but we aren’t going there yet.) Assuming this is the case, I started to wonder what pre-exposure to a companion with this kind of history would mean to the Doctor in the past, the present, and of course what it would do to poor Sarah Jane.
> 
> This chapter assumes the third Doctor’s incident in The Five Doctors takes place just before Planet of the Spiders. I never thought that spider was that frightening, compared to some of the other things the Doctor had faced, so he had to be afraid of... something else.

  
“I am definitely not the man I was,” the future Doctor said. “Thank Goodness!”   
  
The Doctor pushed Sarah Jane Smith into the TARDIS ahead of him, passing through the temporal membrane that Rassilon had thoughtfully created to enable the TARDIS to split and reintegrate with itself in its various timelines. He didn’t look back at his future self, but he had heard. Something was bothering his future self.  
  
The Doctor took a deep breath. Of course something was bothering him. Oh, this was going to be trouble! All of them were in trouble — except the old man with the cane, who had it easy. He was about to have troubles himself. As soon as he got back into his own timeline, he knew he was going to have to sit down and meditate so his memories could integrate. He was already suffering the twitch that occurred in his mental processes when he ran into himself.   
  
The problem was, his timelines were always going on at the same time. The Here and Now was always flowing along with the There and Then. When he met himself he stopped being linear, and instead became cyclic. Cyclic memories could catch you up and tangle you, endangering your entire regenerative cycle, confusing your neural personality integration, not to mention giving you a massive headache.   
  
That young looking blond bloke he was apparently going to turn into a few regenerations on was going to have the toughest time of it, having to drag all four of his previous selves into his head. As the Doctor was now, he only had to integrate the memories of his first and second generations, and he’d had to do that before. Any more than two new memories, though, and he wasn’t sure how well he’d handle it.   
  
Hopefully, he would have matured by the time he became the blond.   
  
Until today, he had no memory of today. As of tomorrow, he would have three memories of today, from three different perspectives and three different timelines. Until the event was over, his memory wouldn’t integrate. He had to get Sarah Jane home as quickly as possible and return to his own timeline, or risk a permanent mental tear, possibly memory gaps — and he was NOT going to risk that again! Being banished to twentieth century Earth with gaping holes in his neural net had been a pleasant enough hell, but a hell nevertheless.   
  
“So, my dear,” he said to Sarah Jane. “When am I taking you?”   
  
“What?” Sarah Jane had not been herself this trip. Less boisterous, more melancholy. Of course, she was older.  
  
“When are you coming from? I can get you right back there. I just have to make one quick stop... very tricky these short hops.” He touched the TARDIS controls and groaned. “Good heavens! What have I done to you, my dear?” he asked.   
  
Sarah Jane looked at him, startled, and then looked away when she realized he was referring to the TARDIS. The Doctor glanced at her, but he was too focused on the mess his TARDIS was in to really grok Sarah Jane’s moods. He couldn’t stand it! This was NOT his TARDIS. The interior design was odd, the temperature had been lowered a solid degree Celsius, and the control console was in some kind of modern tangle! “Well, no doubt I’ll like it in the future,” the Doctor muttered, trying to make sense of the controls.   
  
“No doubt,” Sarah Jane said quietly.   
  
He thought better when he was talking out loud, and Sarah always listened, so he spoke to her. “This modern version of the TARDIS will dis-integrate when I get back to nineteen eighty, and I’ll have my old console back. I just have to pick up Bessie first,” the Doctor said. He was having a very hard time getting the TARDIS to cooperate with a short hop through the Death Zone. “She’s still down on the plateau...”  
  
“How are you going to get Bessie in through the door?” Sarah Jane asked.   
  
“I don’t need to,” the Doctor said. “If I can handle the dimensional transcendence integrity correctly....” he pressed a few more buttons. “I can land the TARDIS....” his eyes narrowed, “right on top of Bessie...” he eyed the calculations and tried to line up the dimensional materialization between TARDIS and Roadster. “And she should materialize right THERE.” He pointed right where Sarah Jane was standing. “You might want to move out the way, my dear.”   
  
Sarah Jane jumped to the side of the console room, well out of the way of the imminent yellow roadster. The Doctor pulled smoothly on the interior integration lever and set the TARDIS down....   
  
And a large rock materialized on the floor of the control room.   
  
“Hm,” the Doctor said. He looked at the rock, he looked at the viewscreen, and frowned. Bessie was still sitting quietly on the grey landscape about seven yards from the TARDIS. “Well,” the Doctor said. “I guess we can try that again.” He switched up the dimensional integrity modulator, repositioned the latitudinal directional node, powered up the materialization sequence for a one second burst, and pulled smoothly on the interior integration lever....  
  
And another rock appeared on the floor of the control room.   
  
The Doctor lost his temper. “Modern bloody applications, who needs to monitor the updates of twitter feeds and novelty ring tones in the twenty-first century?” He pulled a device completely off the console of the TARDIS and threw it behind him, reconfigured the materialization sequence again, tweaked the dimensional integrity modulator, and pulled smoothly on the interior integration lever....  
  
And a third rock appeared in the console room. A boulder, really, so large that Sarah Jane was effectively trapped between it and the wall. “Ahm... Doctor,” Sarah Jane said, surprisingly calmly considering her cramped position. “Could you maybe take off again and leave this behind? Because I’m finding it a bit difficult to breathe, and I think I’m extremely lucky this thing did not materialize on my toe.”   
  
“So sorry,” the Doctor said, pressed a few buttons, and all three of the rocks were left behind. The TARDIS materialized once more, and this time Bessie herself appeared in the console room. Partly in the console room. Partly in the hallway behind, as it appeared to have materialized in the middle of the wall. But it was better than his previous attempts, so he decided to leave it.   
  
Sarah Jane stared at the bisected car, which appeared to have the wall dropped through it, and began to laugh. The Doctor normally liked her laugh. It was playful and youthful and intelligent. Not this time. This time Sarah Jane’s laughter was bitter, almost a controlled hysteria, with choked tears behind it. “Oh, I’ve missed you!” she said in the middle of it.   
  
The Doctor folded his arms and gazed at her. There was something he really didn’t like about Sarah Jane like this. There was just something he was missing, and it galled him. “Where’ve I gone?” he asked.   
  
Sarah Jane controlled herself instantly, and she looked away. “Nowhere,” she said quickly. “You — you regenerated, that’s all. I haven’t seen you like this in a long time.”   
  
“Yes, all teeth and curls, so you said,” the Doctor said, though he got the feeling Sarah was hiding something. “Too bad I didn’t get to meet him, always nice to know what your next self will be. Get the wardrobe ready and all.”   
  
Sarah Jane smiled. “You’ll figure it out,” she said. Her voice sounded very fond. She was remembering something, he could tell.   
  
“I’ll have to prepare a cricket sweater for that blond bloke,” the Doctor said. “When the time finally comes. But that’ll be after my next one.” He looked down at his velvet and ruffles. “None of the rest of me have any elegance. Don’t know why I bother.”   
  
“You’ll look great,” Sarah Jane said, and bit her lips so tight they made a thin line.  
  
He glanced at her. “What am I like?”   
  
Sarah shrugged. “A bit mad,” she said. “So no change, there.” But she wouldn’t meet his eyes, and something wavered in her voice.   
  
Her voice worried him. “Don’t tell me how it happens,” the Doctor said.   
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“I shouldn’t know too much of my own future.”   
  
“I know that,” Sarah said.   
  
“Just, it wasn’t...?” The Doctor frowned and looked down at the TARDIS controls. “When are you coming from?” he said instead.   
  
“Nineteen eighty-three,” Sarah Jane said.   
  
“Right,” the Doctor said. He touched the controls and set the TARDIS for the right century. He knew the date meant nothing — Sarah Jane’s time line might have nothing to do with his. Might have nothing to do with Earth’s, for that matter. But it was nearly nineteen eighty already in his own time line, at least as far as his job at UNIT went with the Brigadier. Three years? Maybe less? He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. He liked this body. It was fit, and strong, and it liked to move.   
  
“I don’t want to know how it happens,” he said again.   
  
“I won’t tell you,” Sarah Jane said carefully.   
  
“Just, it wasn’t...” the Doctor said again. Finally he couldn’t take it. He looked over at Sarah. “It wasn’t the Time Lords, was it?” he asked, half hiding his mouth behind his knuckle. “They... they didn’t... force me out again?” He realized his hand was shaking, and he squeezed it shut, lowering it quickly. Being faced with his second regeneration always filled him with bitter regret. He had NOT been ready to leave that body, and he half hated his own self for being in possession of his life. Having his memory fractured hadn’t helped with his personality integration, either.   
  
“No,” Sarah Jane said very gently. “You chose it.”   
  
The Doctor nodded. Good to know. Good to know. At least he had been ready. He wouldn’t have his life stripped from him without his permission. “Thank you. Don’t tell me how it happens,” he said again.   
  
“I won’t,” Sarah Jane said.   
  
The Doctor looked at the wall, then at his bisected car, at the pulsing central pillar of the TARDIS, at the console, and then back at Sarah Jane again. “You were there?” he asked.   
  
“Doctor!”   
  
“Sorry. Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Always fills me with dread, you know,” he admitted. “I like being me. I never want to change. I held on to my first life so long... well, you just saw. I... lost my teeth, needed a cane, all those aches and pains, because I was used to being me. I didn’t need to hold on that long, but... I’m stubborn,” he finished. “And then... then last time it was so awful....”   
  
“I know,” Sarah Jane said gently. “You told me. Well, you will tell me. Or... the other you will tell me.” She swallowed and stared into his face. “It won’t be like that. It didn’t seem to bother you.”   
  
The Doctor frowned. It really hadn’t bothered him? He couldn’t fathom it. “Believe me, Sarah Jane,” he said ruefully. “It will bother me.”   
  
“But everything has its time,” Sarah Jane said softly. “Everything ends. You’ll teach me that.” Her words were very final, and her voice was as heavy as dwarf-star alloy.   
  
The Doctor gazed at her. “Don’t tell me too much,” he said. “I shouldn’t have even been asking. It’s dangerous.”  
  
“I know,” Sarah Jane said. She smirked. “You’ll teach me that, too.”   
  
The Doctor took a deep breath. “Quite an adventure, wasn’t it? Gallifrey! Cybermen, the Master, war robots, Rassilon!”  
  
“I hated that faceless war robot,” Sarah Jane admitted. “I think it’ll give me nightmares.”  
  
“You and half the galaxy,” the Doctor said.   
  
Sarah Jane stared at him for a long time, and then looked away, lightly touching Bessie’s yellow fender. “Thank you, for keeping me safe out there,” she said. She shook her head. “I’m kind of glad I went, though. I thought... I’d never get to see Gallifrey.” There was something very dark in Sarah Jane’s voice, as if it was a specific longing of hers. Which didn’t make much sense, but then, she was some years older than the Sarah Jane the Doctor knew. No doubt he’d told her about it — though why he would have touted Gallifrey’s virtues when he was still angry as a nest of hornets about the Time Lords’ treatment of him escaped him. “I didn’t think humans were allowed,” she said. She stared at him then, as if daring him to tell her otherwise.   
  
“They’re not,” the Doctor said. “As far as I know. If you hadn’t noticed, president Borusa was breaking every single rule possible, drawing us all in at once. He could have killed me. You. Everyone.” He shook his head. “Quest for immortality. What folly.”   
  
He blinked as he realized his own statement. Here he was, worrying about when he’d suffer his next regeneration. Wasn’t that exactly the same thing? He looked up at Sarah Jane. She looked very beautiful in her mock-Edwardian early-eighties vest and blouse. The pink and white looked good with her hair, and her eyes... they had gotten so deep. The worst thing about his last regeneration had been losing Jamie and Zoe. Maybe, if you didn’t lose everyone, it wasn’t so much like death? “We stay friends, then?” he asked.   
  
Sarah Jane looked at him. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Best friends.” She looked like she was trying not to cry.   
  
“Wouldn’t be so bad, then,” the Doctor said.   
  
Sarah Jane closed her eyes and shook her head. No, not so bad. Unless it was some other denial. He couldn’t read this older Sarah Jane at all. She had depth, she was powerful. From a reckless little girl who was forever sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, Sarah Jane had become pillar of steel in a silken glove. He was wrong — he DID like Sarah Jane like this. It was just... she wasn’t his Sarah Jane. She belonged to that other Doctor, the one he hadn’t met, the one he had yet to become.   
  
The TARDIS hummed and hovered, and the Doctor realized he hadn’t filled in specific data. “I need exact date and time you were snatched,” he said.   
  
Sarah Jane told him, and her new home address. “All right, then,” he said. He touched a button and set the TARDIS down gently on the street before her house. “So, this is it, my dear,” the Doctor said. “Your home.”   
  
Sarah Jane gave him a hard look. “You’re sure, this time?”   
  
The Doctor wondered if this was a private joke he wasn’t yet privy to. He opened the viewscreen and showed her her house, neat and cheerful, with a “BEWARE OF THE DOG” sign on the gate. Funny. He hadn’t realized Sarah Jane was partial to dogs. “Look right?” he asked.   
  
Sarah Jane smiled. “Yes,” she said. She bit her lip, and then seemed to make a decision. “Cuppa tea?” she asked. She half laughed. “Or I could make some coffee.”   
  
He grinned at her reference to their first meeting. But he shook his head. “I have to get back to my own time line,” the Doctor said with regret. He rubbed his temple. The headache was already starting. “I wish I could stay. But memory integration always takes it right out of you. I have to get back to where I started from, and quickly. I have to draw in the memories from my two previous selves, or I could cause permanent damage.” He shook his head. “Wretched president. Never did like him.”  
  
“You should go, then,” Sarah Jane said. Her voice sounded hoarse. She took a deep breath, and then pulled something out of the pocket of her skirt. “This is for you,” she said.   
  
He held out his hand, and Sarah Jane put into it a wax paper screw of — “Jelly babies?” He raised an eyebrow. “You know I don’t particularly like sweets.”  
  
“You will do,” Sarah Jane said. She tilted her head. “Knowing that won’t rend the fabric of space time, will it?” She was trembling.   
  
“Are you all right, Sarah?” the Doctor asked.   
  
Sarah Jane nodded, but she seemed to be holding back tears. “I’m just so glad to be home,” she said. “I thought I was going to die out there.”   
  
The Doctor nodded. “Gallifrey always has that effect on me, too,” he said with irony. Sarah Jane nodded, acknowledging the humor, but she wasn’t laughing. He slipped the jelly babies into his pocket, and then reached out — he couldn’t help it — to touch her cheek. He knew better than to get so intimate with a human, but Sarah had this sparking, desperate look. What he really wanted to do was hold her. But he kept himself in check. “But this isn’t goodbye,” he said  
  
“I know it isn’t,” Sarah Jane said, her voice soft and earnest. “You need to go back. I need you to go back. I’m still there in nineteen eighty just waiting for you. ” Before he could move, Sarah Jane surged forward and pressed her lips to his in a kiss so lingering and sincere it was hard to believe it was chaste. Their lips were closed, but it didn’t feel chaste. At. All.   
  
She pulled away, and the Doctor stared at her, utterly and completely stunned. There was no way a kiss from a human should have felt like that. There was even a tingle in his mind, a semi-psychic connection of emotion, and where the hell had Sarah Jane learned a trick like that? That was pure Time Lord, last he’d known. But he couldn’t read it, because it didn’t quite fit. Whatever it was, it was tuned to a personality quirk he simply hadn’t developed yet. He needed to study human psychic abilities, that was clear. Next on the list. Top project. Absolutely. He’d talk to the Brig tomorrow.   
  
“Until then, Doctor,” Sarah whispered.   
  
“Until then, Sarah Jane.” His voice came out hoarse with shock.   
  
Sarah made a small sound, but she turned and left before the Doctor could be sure what it was. Probably she was telling the truth — she had been frightened, and was happy to be home. In a way for her this was a goodbye, because to her he had already regenerated. She’d probably never see him like this again. That was all it was. That was the only reason why she’d kissed him just now.   
  
His older self was probably just around the corner, waiting to pick her up. Because the feel of that almost-but-really-not-at-all-chaste kiss was still lingering with him, and there was no way he was going to let that go in less than three years. Though actually, Sarah seemed older than just three years — ach, but if she was traveling with him that would have to happen. And that kiss had come from somewhere, so probably he...  
  
But no. That was ridiculous. He was too sensible for that. Sarah Jane was human, and it was a bad idea to get into romantic relations with a human. They weren’t entirely sexually compatible, their lifespans were wildly different, their psychic abilities were so non-existent that it was like masturbation — all physical but no substance. Except... that kiss....   
  
No. He was much too sensible for that.   
  
Right now.   
  
He touched the controls of the TARDIS and set it for the road on which the Time Scoop had picked up him and Bessie. He would set down the TARDIS, set it for dematerialization, and be left exactly where he’d started this morning, none the worse for the wear. As he traveled the few minutes through the vortex — three years wasn’t much of a hop — the Doctor touched Bessie’s yellow fender and pondered.   
  
This had been the strangest of journeys. Sarah Jane had seemed quite disappointed that his fourth regeneration was trapped in a schism, and she hadn’t had the chance to see him. Come to think of it, it was very strange that Sarah Jane had been brought to Gallifrey at all. Apart from Susan, who was also a Time Lord, all the rest of the Doctor’s companions had been with him at the time he was snatched. Why would the president have sent specifically for Sarah Jane, when he hadn’t brought in Polly or Dodo or Vicki or any of the others who had traveled with him over the years? What was so important about Sarah Jane?   
  
If that kiss had been any indication... quite a lot.   
  
He closed his eyes and thought of that kiss again. She probably didn’t even know what she was doing to his mind. The kiss had been controlled and measured, as far as a human being was concerned. But she had picked that up from SOMEWHERE, and it had felt....   
  
He hadn’t felt anything like that...   
  
in a very...   
  
very...   
  
long...   
  
time....  
  
He wanted to feel it again. He was cut off from his people, he’d been trapped so long on planet Earth he was starting to think in English, he was lonely and he was angry and he wanted to feel that again. Could one life be worth it for a chance at happiness? Not someone else’s life, of course, but his own? He hadn’t had much happiness in his life. Just loneliness and pain. What he had just felt from Sarah Jane was... meaningful. He wanted it. He wanted it enough to....  
  
He blinked as he realized this. He did want it. He wanted his next life. He wanted to be reckless and foolish and young. He wanted to be a bit mad. He wanted to stop being sensible and stop feeling angry and finally feel happiness again. He wanted her.   
  
The opportunity would present itself. He was still frightened — no need to go looking for it. It would find him. And when it did, he wouldn’t fight it. He would face his fear. That was more important than just going on living. Because he knew. It was time. Everything has its time, and everything ends. Even velvet and ruffles and yellow roadsters and jujitsu. He was a Time Lord.   
  
He knew when it was time. 


	2. Of Jelly Babies and Metal Dogs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter assumes a familiarity with K-9 and Company. For those who haven’t seen it, the Doctor left K-9 with nothing but a terse “For Sarah Jane” message, and that’s all the explanation we’re given for why he showed up in a box in her Aunt Lavinia’s attic.

“Until then, Doctor,” Sarah Jane whispered, meaning the past.   
  
“Until then, Sarah Jane,” the Doctor murmured back at her, and she knew he meant the future. His voice was so hoarse and passionate that she knew she’d gone too far. She shouldn’t have kissed him.   
  
She wanted to kiss him again, kiss him properly this time. So it wasn’t the right Doctor, this was still HER Doctor, the Doctor she had loved and looked up to, even if they hadn’t gotten as close as they ever would. But she knew she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t risk one line of their history, not the first time he’d hugged her so that it meant something, or the first time he’d taken her hand just to hold it in his or the first time he’d kissed her or all the other first times that were so precious to him and to her. She would not jeopardize that. She’d rather die.   
  
She turned quickly and fled before she did something stupid.   
  
She waited behind the gate until the TARDIS started thrumming and dematerialized before her eyes. Only then did she start to cry.   
  
He wouldn’t even look at her! God only knew how much time had gone by, and he wouldn’t even look at her! She hated that face. That placidly handsome blond with his stupid cricket sweater, who obviously preferred celery over jelly babies! What had become of him? What had she done that he wouldn’t even look at her?   
  
The feel of that reckless kiss — last kiss, first kiss — still lingered on her lips. It had felt so wonderful that it hurt. Why had she done something so stupid?   
  
A slight hum told her that K-9 was moving across the pavement toward her. “Danger alleviated, Mistress,” K-9 said. He’d warned her, this morning as she was going out. He’d warned her — something about temporal flux or... she couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. He’d said it had to do with the Doctor, and she’d refused to believe it, refused to hope that deeply. And yet, at the bus stop, she had quietly shifted her jelly babies from her purse to her pocket, wondering... hoping....  
  
“Mistress? Inquire as to reason for distress?”   
  
“Go away, K-9,” Sarah Jane whispered.   
  
“Lachrymose excretions are indicative of distress,” K-9 said, his voice more insistent. “Inquiry reason for distress?” When Sarah Jane didn’t answer he added, “K-9 available for assistance to remove distress. Standing by.”   
  
“Can you bring back the Doctor?” Sarah Jane snapped at him. “Go away! I don’t want you! I never asked for you!” She fled up the stairs and unlocked her front door, her hand trembling as she forced the key. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes.   
  
She tripped over the door, but caught herself and managed to find her way upstairs. Awards for Journalistic Excellence hung on the walls. They meant nothing to her at that moment. The British Press Award — the first woman to achieve the distinction since its inception in 1970; pointless. The Investigative Reporters and Editors award; a waste of space. Even that lone Pulitzer she’d earned last year in America, that she’d finally agreed to accept only under a pseudonym because it just drew too much attention. What she had lost in her life made all those achievements entirely worthless. What were pieces of paper and brass compared to the universe? She’d been waiting for him for the last seven years, and now she knew, he wasn’t going to come. He just wasn’t.   
  
She’d thought he’d come when she won the Pulitzer. It was a silly little Earth award, but it meant something to her. But no. Apparently it didn’t matter. Not to a Time Lord who no longer loved her.   
  
That was the answer, wasn’t it. He’d left her behind and forgotten about her. Maybe he was ashamed of her? Maybe he’d gone back to Gallifrey and realized that a human being really was a poor choice for a lover. Maybe the fact that she couldn’t speak to him on a telepathic level, or carry his children, or — or —   
  
Maybe she’d just been boring. He was ever changing, and he gazed into eternity. She had only one life, slowly ticking by. Maybe he’d plumbed the depths of her mind and her heart and there was nothing more he could learn from her.   
  
She hadn’t minded meeting Tegan. She knew the Doctor. She knew wherever he was, he was never alone. He had a typically low libido, he usually didn’t develop romantic entanglements — he claimed they were too complicated. But why couldn’t he have come back for HER? It didn’t make any sense.   
  
She was almost glad her Doctor, her mad eyed, curly headed Doctor, hadn’t been there. If he had been she was afraid she’d have disgraced herself. She was afraid she’d have thrown herself at him, and she knew not to do that to the Doctor. He panicked if someone grabbed him when he wasn’t ready for it. He was sensitive that way. But she missed him so MUCH!  
  
She’d thought, when he’d first left her, that he would be right back. That he’d finish his mission on Gallifrey and come back to her. Then, she thought he just didn’t know when he’d dropped her off. He was seven years off schedule, he’d dropped her in the seventies, likely he’d come for her in nineteen eighty. She’d used the time, and her foreknowledge of events, to forward her career, to cover news that no one else was prepared to catch, biding her time until then. But nineteen eighty had come and gone. She’d stayed in constant contact with UNIT during that year, after she was sure her younger self was off with the Doctor and she wouldn’t accidently run into herself. But he hadn’t come for her, and he hadn’t come to UNIT, and there was no word.   
  
Maybe he’d forgotten?   
  
Then she’d found K-9 at her aunt Lavinia’s, and she knew he hadn’t forgotten. She loved that little daft metal dog, and she could see why the Doctor had given him to her — kind of. But why leave the computer and not come himself?  
  
She’d begun carrying jelly babies in her purse after the first year. She had the whole thing planned out in her head. It would be so nonchalant. Hello, Doctor. Nice to see you again — you know you left me in Aberdeen? Don’t worry about it, Doctor. Have a jelly baby. Of course I’m coming with you. We belong together.   
  
You know I still love you.   
  
Now she knew it just wasn’t going to happen. Because she’d finally found the Doctor again — a future Doctor, not one from the past — and he wouldn’t even look at her. Except at the very end, when she’d thrust herself into his line of sight and demanded he take her hand. She’d reminded him she had only one life, and it was passing. His gaze had lingered on her, but there had been no fondness in his eyes. She’d seen no love there. No sorrow. Just terror.   
  
It was over. It had been over for years, she just hadn’t accepted it. She was stuck on Earth now, bus tickets and bank accounts and awards of journalistic excellence, and they all meant the same thing: Nothing.   
  
A whirring sound drew her attention from her self-indulgent weeping. (She could just hear her Aunt Lavinia now. “Crying increases mucus production and stresses the body, making one more likely to spread virus. Didn’t you ever think of that? Don’t be selfish, Sarah Jane. Learn to control yourself, dear.”) K-9. She blinked. How in God’s name had he gotten up the stairs?   
  
The answer would reveal itself later when she went to look — K-9, opposed to all she knew of his programming, had used his nose laser to carve a ramp into her staircase and wall, just big enough for his wheels to travel. When she sold the house three years later she would be forced to hire a contractor to fix it before the realtor would even consider it. But now all she cared about was that she was being interrupted, and she didn’t want to hear K-9 right now. She didn’t even want him to exist. She’d rather have nothing at all than a daft reminder that the Doctor hadn’t come — and wouldn’t come.   
  
“I said go away!” she shouted at the machine.   
  
“Conflicts with primary function, Mistress,” K-9 said, his tone all business.   
  
“Primary function?” Sarah Jane snapped.   
  
“Hard wired by the Doctor Master. Serve and protect Sarah Jane Smith,” K-9 said, quoting his orders. “Self-preservation and all successive orders are secondary to primary function.”   
  
“Oh, go to hell,” Sarah Jane muttered, turning back to her pillow.   
  
“Unable to comply,” K-9 said, as always taking everything she said quite literally. “Location of 'hell' not in my data banks.”   
  
“Then just shut up,” Sarah Jane growled.   
  
“Unable to comply,” K-9 said. “Conflicts with orders.”   
  
“What orders?”   
  
“Final orders, from the Doctor Master,” K-9 said.  
  
“To hell with you and your daft orders!” Sarah Jane yelled. She rolled over and kicked the mechanical dog so hard that he went skirting across the room and crashed into the wall, where he made a few unpleasant mechanical noises, and then bowed his head. His lights went out, and his ears and tail were perfectly still.   
  
Sarah Jane stared at the broken dog in horror. She’d killed him. No — she’d broken him.   
  
No. She’d killed him. K-9 was simplistic, literal and without emotion, but he had sentience, and a sense of morality (unless it was circumvented by something, but hypnosis could do the same to a human) which officially designated him as a mechanical life form. Sarah Jane knew this. The Doctor had explained mechanical life forms to her, ages ago.   
  
Maybe she could call her cousin Brendan down from that college he was working at and see what he could do about fixing him. Brendan knew — roughly — how K-9 worked, and had done some poking about in his interior since he’d started his degree in computer engineering. But he’d never had to actually FIX the dog before.   
  
Then, with a turgid whine, K-9's lights activated, his nose laser extended, and something six foot tall and animated was projected onto the distant wall.   
  
“Hello, Sarah Jane,” said the Doctor.   
  
Sarah Jane looked at the image. This was her Doctor, all teeth and curls and eyes like Alice’s hatter. The voice came from K-9's speakers, but it was most assuredly the Doctor’s voice.   
  
“If my calculations are correct, K-9 should have this program activated about the time I drop you off after that little tiff in the Death Zone on Gallifrey,” said the projection. “Memory integration within temporal flux is a little difficult to understand, and there just aren’t any words in English to explain it properly, so suffice it to say I couldn’t mention this until after it had happened — sorry it’s taken so long.” He was distracted and babbling, but Sarah Jane knew his face so well. He was hurting. “I just wanted to say, I didn’t understand anything you were saying to me a few minutes ago — well, a few minutes ago, for you — in the TARDIS. But I wanted to. And that made everything so complicated.”   
  
He looked down and sighed. “You and I were always so complicated, Sarah. And I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for anything I might have done to hurt you. I didn’t really realize, when I left, that I was leaving. And maybe... oh, I don’t know my future. It’s only been a few years since I left you, for me. Maybe I’ll come to see you tomorrow. I don’t know. I do know that, for me, it’ll be a while before I can see you again. If ever. And I’ll miss you.”   
  
He took a deep breath before he went on. “I can’t explain.” He shook his head. “There are so many things I can’t say to you. And you know that. That’s one of the things that always made it so hard. But I want you to know that, for a while... you were my universe. And whatever happens tomorrow or next year or twenty years from now. I’ll never forget you. My Sarah Jane.”  
  
He tossed his head then, as if banishing sentiment. He was good at that. “Congratulations on the Pulitzer. But Lois Lane? Couldn’t you have come up with a better pseudonym?”   
  
The projection flickered and went out.   
  
Sarah Jane buried her face in her hands, smothering a giggle. She’d known the Doctor would say something like that when he heard.   
  
“Mistress?” K-9 said from behind her. “Orders, Mistress.”   
  
“Save that message!” Sarah Jane said.   
  
“Message retained,” K-9 said. “Available for retrieval.”   
  
Sarah Jane got down on her knees and hugged the metal dog. “I’m sorry, K-9,” Sarah Jane said. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”   
  
“Misunderstanding of the nature of this unit, Mistress. I can neither feel nor be hurt. But apology noted.”   
  
“Good,” Sarah Jane said.   
  
“Warning. Kicking of unit not recommended by designer settings.”   
  
“I know. I’m sorry, K-9.”   
  
“Noted, Mistress,” K-9 said.   
  
“Can you play that message again?” Sarah asked.   
  
“Affirmative, Mistress,” K-9 said, and the projection of the Doctor again flared onto the opposite wall.   
  
Sarah Jane watched it through once more, and then sighed. So he hadn’t forgotten. There was still no explanation. Maybe it was her fault, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was him and maybe it was outside forces. But Sarah knew that the Doctor really had cared for her, and that he missed her. That had to be enough.   
  
That was it. Time to stop expecting him around every corner. Maybe he’d come back, and maybe he wouldn’t. But he’d known when to send this message, and if he was going to come back, he’d know when to come.   
  
He would know when it was time. 


	3. Of Metal Dogs and Mental Blocks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not reached any conclusions about the fifth Doctor and Tegan, so I’m leaving that relationship vague. The fifth Doctor did flirt with her, but then he was flirting with Adric too, and I am certainly not going there, (cute though Matthew Waterhouse was with those big eyes) – I’m sure others with more graphic minds have gone there, and don’t need my help. I am convinced that the Doctor and Romana had relations, (since Tom Baker did actually marry Lalla Ward,) so suffice it to say the Doctor has had intimate relationships since Sarah Jane. P.S. This is really confusing, but that’s the fault of the situation.

  
“You mean you’re deliberately choosing to go on the run from your own people — in a rackety old TARDIS?” Tegan asked loudly.   
  
“Why not?” the Doctor said. “After all... that’s how it all started.” He felt a bit wistful having watched his old selves and all his old friends. He had set the TARDIS to random and was spinning safely through the vortex. It was done. Yes. Let all of this be finished.   
  
But it wasn’t finished, of course. Not yet. Not for him. “I have something I need to do,” he announced quietly. “Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”   
  
Tegan looked up, startled. “You’re running off again?”  
  
“I’m just going to have a little lie down,” the Doctor said.   
  
“Oh, no!” Tegan jumped after him into the corridors. “You’re not running off after all that. I have a few questions I want to ask you, Doctor.”  
  
“They’ll have to wait,” the Doctor said. Tegan opened her mouth to say something else, but he lifted his finger and placed it over her lips. “Later!” He opened the door to his room.   
  
Tegan followed him in, boldly. “There’s something I can’t understand,” she complained. “Is there some reason why you didn’t warn us all this was about to happen? Why didn’t you just tell yourself that the president was behind all of it from the beginning? I mean, you knew. The old guy knew. And he’s you, or he was you, so why didn’t you remember?”   
  
The Doctor’s headache was really hurting by now, and Tegan’s loud voice was not helping matters. “It’s difficult to explain, all right?” he said.   
  
“But come on! The TARDIS nearly gets blown up, everyone’s lives were at risk, and technically you should have known all along, right?”   
  
“Look,” the Doctor said. “Time Lord interaction with temporal flux is a little difficult for anyone under the level of minor deity to understand, all right?”   
  
Tegan raised an eyebrow, half annoyed and half amused. “So now you’re a minor deity?”   
  
“Well, we are called Time Lords,” the Doctor said. “I really need to rest, can you...?”  
  
“No,” Tegan said. “I need to understand how this works — just a little! Give me some reason why you didn’t know this was coming!”   
  
The Doctor took in air and tried to explain it in one breath. “Time Lords pass through all points of time at every moment, which is the only reason why we are able to make TARDIS’s that can pass through all points of time, manipulating the vortex, which passes through our secondary psychic memory as well as time and space, resulting in a tertiary non-linear memory wave, as the There and Then is always in flux with the Here and Now, and Time Lord memory is only liner in singular waves, and develops cyclic transitions when the There and Then intersects with the Here and Now.” Tegan, of course, only blinked. There really weren’t words for this in English, and the Gallifreyan words didn’t translate properly. “Translation,” he said, “I had no idea, in the space-time you understand as yesterday. Tomorrow, I’ll remember five times over.”   
  
“So you forgot?”   
  
“No. As of yesterday, it hadn’t happened. As of tomorrow, I will always have remembered, and it happened for me five times. I’m in transition. Which means I need to sleep.” Well, not exactly sleep, but Tegan wasn’t about to begin to understand memory integration meditation.   
  
Tegan frowned, but seemed mollified. “All right, Doctor. I’ll leave you to it.” And muttering something about Time Lord PMS, she finally left.   
  
Too late. The Doctor rubbed his head and sighed. Damn! Tegan and her insatiable questions and her brassy voice and her wretched insistence! They were why he liked her, but why couldn’t she have left him alone two minutes ago? The pain wasn’t so bad then, he could have sunk into the trance-state before it got too hard. Now the pain was going to make it difficult to integrate, and unfortunately, he was going to FEEL it — all of it. He’d been hoping to integrate in a dream-state where he wouldn’t have to think about it.   
  
The memories came in waves. His own recent memory was the base line — Tegan and Turlough in a rare moment of peace, the temporal attack as his past was stripped away, trying to stop the process and only managing to trap his last regeneration and Romana in the vortex—   
  
Ow! There he was, trapped in the president’s catchment. Actually, this was very simple. It was a very, very boring memory. Cramped with Romana, confused, a bit scared. But then untrapped, landing outside the TARDIS, and then the memory of his last life integrating the memories of the previous three regenerations, and —   
  
Ow! Sarah Jane. Dear Sarah Jane. Taken into the sky in Bessie, finding Sarah Jane in the gully, protecting her until they got to the tower, meeting up with regeneration number two, and —   
  
Ow! Number two, dragged with the Brig on what should have been the happy occasion of his keynote speech, fighting the Yeti, running into visions of Jamie and Zoe — oh, ow, ow, ow!   
  
Back to his first self. Peaceful enough. Snatched up on a pleasant walk through the gardens. Running from a Dalek. Susan. It was nice to see Susan again. No pain there, thank heavens. None, really, none — ow! But Susan always made him think of his daughter, who didn’t live long enough to regenerate once, or even see her child face the Untempered Schism. The Doctor’s daughter had died too young, and that memory hurt, too.   
  
The Doctor took a deep breath. He always tried not to remember anything — anyone — at all. He hated being forced to by cyclic memory integration.   
  
He curled up on his bed and buried his head in his arms. It would take several hours for his time lines to even out again. He’d never had to integrate this many lives before — it hurt a lot more than he’d expected! Now that he was partially integrated, he remembered hoping that he’d have matured enough to handle it by the time he came to be himself. Nope! he silently told his younger self. Sorry, young fellow, you’re still a useless cowardly drifter who’d rather run from pain than face it.   
  
He wished he wasn’t. Now that he could remember Sarah Jane’s face on the way back to Earth, he wished to high heaven that he’d bashed his head against the wall and given himself temporary amnesia. But his younger self hadn’t been able to interpret anything of what she’d been saying. It hadn’t occurred to him that, a lifetime, two lifetimes later, this memory would burn against his soul like acid. It had been a rather pleasant memory for him, at the time. And would remain a pleasant memory until he found himself, a lifetime later, lying outside the TARDIS with Romana poking her head out at him and saying, “Doctor! Hurry!”  
  
He was very, very glad that he’d trapped his fourth regeneration, so that he wouldn’t have been standing there, staring between Sarah Jane and Romana. Explaining Sarah Jane to Romana would have been hard enough. He could just picture her, her thick blond hair bouncing over her shoulder as she cocked her head at him, — all her supercilious superior fondness — grinning at him as she said, “Oh, really? And I thought you were too old for that kind of caper, Doctor! But I suppose a mid-life crisis can result in myriad reckless decisions....”   
  
Explaining Romana to Sarah Jane, though... that would have been like cutting out one of his hearts. “Yes, Sarah, I left you, and then I picked up with another Time Lord, because she’s not human, we’re the same species, and it just was so much easier with her...”   
  
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was what Sarah would have thought.   
  
It had hurt so much seeing Sarah again. He couldn’t even look at her without his insides twisting in regret. Why couldn’t she have been the younger Sarah, the Sarah that only knew him in his third regeneration? Why couldn’t the president have picked her up back then, when things hadn’t gone so far and gotten so painful? When he hadn’t already left her...?   
  
He had been so afraid she was going to speak to him when she saw him. He had been petrified she was going to come up to him and demand an explanation, accuse him with those impossibly deep eyes — human, so human. So passionate, so real. How could there be such depths in one so young? But she’d only stared at him in shock and dismay. Given him a terse little handshake, and gone off with his younger self — the one who hadn’t hurt her. Yet. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t want to speak to him. He wasn’t her Doctor anymore. And in an entire lifetime, he hadn’t come back. Not once.   
  
Definitely not the man he was. Not the man who was going to start a relationship with a human without letting her know that it was temporary — that it had to be temporary.   
  
But... Sarah Jane was so precious and perfect. He hadn’t wanted to admit that it had to end. His fourth regeneration was reckless and foolish and given to fits of temper. He wasn’t going to listen to reason, even from his own intellect. He’d let himself drift in the dream, until someone else had to end it for him.   
  
How could he explain it? The Time Lords thought we were getting too close. They told me you were just a pet, an eternal child who would die soon. I told them to go to hell. They threatened to remove your memory. I accused them of murder. Then they told me I could go back to get you, if I was willing to wait twenty years. Twenty years of my own life, they said. Just a blip. And I agreed, because I was so damned scared of what had happened the last time I defied them that I couldn’t risk losing that life, risk you losing your memory of me, like Jamie and Zoe all over again. So I agreed to wait, exiled from you for twenty years. And after twenty years there was Romana, and time had scabbed over the wound, and I was afraid to come back to you and reopen it, because the Time Lords were right, and I knew I’d have to watch you die.   
  
How do you say all that to a human? Painful enough to say it to yourself.   
  
I didn’t come back because I was too much of a coward.   
  
The Doctor shuddered, hugging himself tightly. At least he had left her K-9. Protection, companionship, something to make her laugh. Let her know he’d never, ever forget. But remembering hurt so much....  
  
He could go back now, he realized. His face had changed, but some things never did. He could collect her — pick her up after nineteen eighty-three, since her timeline was now fixed around their separation. But he knew he wouldn’t do it, because he was still too scared. Most of the people he picked up he knew would leave, eventually. Leela was learning from him, and teachers let their students go. Romana was Romana — and you couldn’t keep her on a leash. Nyssa was too desperate to be useful somewhere to stay forever on the TARDIS and Tegan... well, he knew Tegan would go off eventually, too. It was in her nature. He was prepared for that — or he told himself that.   
  
But Sarah Jane would never say, “It’s time for me to go, now. I want you to leave me behind.” She’d simply never say it — not and mean it, anyway, since ‘I’m going!’ had been a running gag between them. But she never meant it. She loved the life too much. She would stay on the TARDIS her whole life, growing slowly older and older, until he regenerated around her, and she looked at him one day and he was young and she was so old.... Unless something terrible happened. That would be even worse. Then it would be like Adric, and she’d be irrevocably dead, and that would be it.   
  
No. She was safe on earth. Safe in the nineteen eighties. He knew where she was. He knew WHEN she was. She would always be there, for the rest if his life, a living breathing wisp of perfection. The only way to keep her was to leave her behind. He couldn’t take her from there, take her to her death, and leave his own hearts intact. He couldn’t bear it. Not after what had happened to Adric.   
  
No. It was done now. Best to forget he’d ever seen her again. She probably hated him, anyway. He knew he hated himself for his cowardice. Why should she be any different?   
  
The Doctor flipped over and faced the ceiling. He lay with his eyes closed, visions like knife blades of Zoe and Jamie and Susan and his daughter and the Brigadier and Romana and Sarah Jane — always Sarah Jane — all of them beating at his head until the pain began to recede — the physical pain, anyway. Once his headache was gone, he was finally able to drop into a trance state and integrate all five lifetimes of memory.   
  
When he finally opened his eyes, it was finished. He was himself again. No sadder than before, because nothing had really changed. It had still been one hell of a night. He took a deep breath and sat up. Time for some breakfast. Maybe he could say something that would make Tegan yell at him. He needed that.   
  
Time to leave this incident behind him. Leave everyone behind him.   
  
He always knew when it was time. 


End file.
